Category Archives: Digital Marketing

I just finished watching Micro-Moments: The New Battleground for Brands by Google and the message is clear that customers don’t just go online anymore, they live online. For most of us in technology fields, this is no surprise, but with mobile technology getting easier and consumers becoming more dependent, the behavior is changing from merely searching to taking action.

The video was hosted by Google’s Digital Strategist, Marcus Yco, the Director of Performance Marketing, Matt Lawson and explored the current trend in decision-making behavior of consumers. Mr. Lawson coined the phrase “Micro Moments” which are short bursts in behavior, where the expectations of relevancy are higher than ever before.

Screengrab from Micro Moments presentation by Google

With the fragmented consumer purchase journey, it’s important for marketers to track intent and context of the user’s path as it leads to conversion. Ways that this can be accomplished are:

Identify micro-moments that matter.

When and why people reach out to us and identify those moments to win.

Deliver on the customer’s needs on the moment.

The digital strategy needs to be focused and in place and the motivation of the consumer needs to be understood.

Measure the moments that matter.

Define the KPIs. Find the different paths that users can convert to customers.

If brands can satisfy the immediacy and relevancy of customers, it leads to loyalty. Customers have an expectation of getting their needs met immediately and brands need to satisfy this need in order to be successful in the mobile space. In a nutshell, the mobile consumer wants content that is useful and timely.

I set up an acquisition campaign on Facebook to drive more followers to our company page. We set up 6 ads utilizing the normal optimization techniques. The goal is to test all six and when the top performer emerges, we will adjust our budget to the best ad.

What I found interesting is that all six were fairly similar with slight changes to test for effectiveness. However, one ad in particular wasn’t visually different but was significantly different in the execution of the design. The other ads used tested techniques of showing faces along with our company logo, but one ad did not have a graphic of our logo placed on the image, but instead was a picture of one of our news trucks with our logo on the side. This ad is the highest-performing ad.

Now I don’t know for sure, but I theorize it has something to do with Facebook’s recognition technology. I believe that Facebook cannot read the actual text of the graphic because it’s embedded within the picture, instead of placed on a layer inside Photoshop.

I can’t really prove this, but I find it peculiar. Therefore, after this ad campaign has ended, I’m going to attempt the same scenario with ads that are compositionally different. I will update what I find out.